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2013 Broken Tackles: Offense

by Aaron Schatz

Let's continue posting some stats from the 2013 Football Outsiders game charting project. Tuesday, we took a look at broken tackles charged to defenders; today, we'll look at broken tackles for offensive players.

We define a "broken tackle" as one of two events: either the ballcarrier escapes from the grasp of the defender, or the defender is in good position for a tackle but the ballcarrier jukes him out of his shoes. If the ballcarrier sped by a slow defender who dived and missed, that didn't count as a broken tackle. It also doesn't count as a broken tackle if a defender gets a hand on the ballcarrier but is effectively being blocked out of the play by another offensive player. We only measure broken tackles for standard plays; volunteers didn't have the time to track them for all special teams plays.

The resulting numbers are subjective, obviously, but there were over two dozen charters involved, so no team's numbers could be overly slanted because of the bias of a single specific charter. We know that there are a other groups on the Web who track broken tackles, and because of the subjectivity, their numbers won't be exactly the same as ours. Given the mistakes that are easy to make when marking players off of television tape, a difference of one or two broken tackles isn't a big deal. But looking at the players with the most and fewest broken tackles does a good job of showing us which ballcarriers are able to power through defenders -- or avoid them with agility -- and which ballcarriers go down quickly when there's contact.

A reminder when comparing 2012 and 2013 broken tackle numbers that our charters marked nearly ten percent more broken tackles in 2013 than in 2012. So the average running back will actually have a couple more broken tackles this year than he did last year.

Here is a list of all running backs with at least 20 broken tackles in 2013:

Most Broken Tackles, 2013 RB

Player

Team

BT

Runs

Rec

Touches

BT/Touch

2012 BT

24-M.Lynch

SEA

59

301

36

337

17.5%

26

25-L.McCoy

PHI

51

314

52

366

13.9%

44

28-A.Peterson

MIN

42

278

30

308

13.6%

44

25-J.Charles

KC

39

259

70

329

11.9%

16

29-D.Murray

DAL

35

217

53

270

13.0%

26

27-E.Lacy

GB

29

284

35

319

9.1%

--

25-G.Bernard

CIN

28

170

56

226

12.4%

--

38-A.Ellington

ARI

28

118

39

157

17.8%

--

22-F.Jackson

BUF

27

206

47

253

10.7%

19

Player

Team

BT

Runs

Rec

Touches

BT/Touch

2012 BT

22-M.Forte

CHI

24

288

76

364

6.6%

15

34-T.Richardson

2TM

24

188

35

223

10.8%

31

35-J.Bell

DET

24

166

53

219

11.0%

20

46-A.Morris

WAS

24

277

9

286

8.4%

27

21-R.Bush

DET

22

223

54

277

7.9%

24

26-L.Bell

PIT

21

244

44

288

7.3%

--

32-M.Jones-Drew

JAC

20

234

43

277

7.2%

9

33-C.Ivory

NYJ

20

182

2

184

10.9%

14

44-B.Tate

HOU

20

180

35

215

9.3%

9

Yes, the defense led Seattle to a championship season, but it also helped that Beast Mode was going FULL BEAST MODE for the entire year. Lynch has been near the top of the league in broken tackles in years past but we had never tracked a year quite like last year. We marked Lynch with at least two broken tackles in every single regular-season game of 2013 except for the Week 13 Monday Night Football dismantling of the Saints, when he had none. (Lynch actually had just 45 yards on 16 carries in that game; the passing game provided all the offense.) The highlight of Lynch's season came against Houston in Week 4, when he broke four different tackles on a 43-yard run including safety Danieal Manningtwice.

The rest of the top five is also made up of players with a history of many broken tackles. LeSean McCoy and Adrian Peterson have been in the top five pretty much every year. Jamaal Charles beat his previous career high of 27, back in the pre-ACL tear season of 2010. After the top five came three straight rookies, including an impressive 28 broken tackles on just 157 touches for Andre Ellington, a broken tackle on 17.8 percent of his touches. That makes Ellington the only running back with at least 100 touches who had a higher broken tackle rate than Beast Mode.

It's also worth noting that whatever his other faults -- and there have been a ton of them -- Trent Richardson does break plenty of tackles. He had 31 in his rookie year, then 24 last year. However, he's not necessarily breaking those tackles on runs. Ten of his 24 broken tackles last year came on receptions.

(If you are looking for full numbers from past years, you will find 2012 here and 2011 here.)

Who saw their broken tackle stats drop? Obviously, players who were injured like Doug Martin (41 to 6) and Arian Foster (28 to 9). Otherwise, two players really stand out. The first is C.J. Spiller, who dropped from 34 broken tackles in 2012 to just 18 last season. But an even bigger drop belonged to Ray Rice. This is just one of many pieces of evidence suggesting that the collapse of the Baltimore running game last year wasn't just the fault of the offensive linemen. Rice went from 27 broken tackles in 2012 to just nine in 2013. (Bernard Pierce, if you are curious, had 19 broken tackles in 2012 and 15 in 2013.)

Another stat showing Ray Rice's struggles last year: We have average yards after contact from ESPN Stats & Information charting, and last place among running backs with at least 100 carries belonged to... Ray Rice, at 1.11 average yards after contact. Lamar Miller, Darren McFadden, Chris Johnson, and Pierce were also low in this number. Donald Brown led the league with 2.7 average yards after contact, way ahead of anyone else, but he only had 101 carries. The rest of the top five: Rashad Jennings, LeGarrette Blount, Chris Ivory, and Adrian Peterson.

Anyway, that's a digression. Let's look at the highest and lowest rates of broken tackles per play. We're adding together catches and carries to get the total number of touches for each player. This is just running backs, with a minimum of 80 touches:

Highest Broken Tackle Rate, 2013 RB

Player

Team

BT

Runs

Rec

Touches

BT/Touch

38-A.Ellington

ARI

28

118

39

157

17.8%

22-M.Ingram

NO

15

78

7

85

17.6%

24-M.Lynch

SEA

59

301

36

337

17.5%

25-L.McCoy

PHI

51

314

52

366

13.9%

28-A.Peterson

MIN

42

278

30

308

13.6%

31-D.Brown

IND

17

101

28

129

13.2%

44-J.Starks

GB

13

89

10

99

13.1%

29-D.Murray

DAL

35

217

53

270

13.0%

25-G.Bernard

CIN

28

170

56

226

12.4%

34-S.Vereen

NE

11

44

47

91

12.1%

Lowest Broken Tackle Rate, 2013 RB

Player

Team

BT

Runs

Rec

Touches

BT/Touch

26-W.McGahee

CLE

2

137

9

146

1.4%

27-R.Rice

BAL

9

214

58

272

3.3%

23-S.Greene

TEN

3

77

6

83

3.6%

25-C.Ogbonnaya

CLE

4

49

48

97

4.1%

24-R.Mathews

SD

13

285

26

311

4.2%

22-D.Martin

TB

6

127

12

139

4.3%

27-R.Jennings

OAK

9

163

35

198

4.5%

20-D.McFadden

OAK

6

114

17

131

4.6%

44-P.Hillis

NYG

4

73

13

86

4.7%

22-R.Turbin

SEA

4

77

8

85

4.7%

Mark Ingram is a bit of a surprising name near the top of the list for broken tackle rate, and there's Donald Brown and all his yards after contact. On the list for lowest broken tackle rate, we find a couple of over-the-hill power backs (McGahee, Hillis) and both of Oakland's backs. Another interesting name that just missed the list for lowest broken tackle rate: Frank Gore. We marked Gore with 15 broken tackles on 292 touches, a 5.1 percent broken tackle rate. It looks like Gore's big jump in broken tackles in 2012 was an aberration: Gore's numbers the last four seasons go 10, 11, 27, 15.

Cam Newton easily led all quarterbacks in broken tackles for the second straight season, going up from 20 in 2012 to 25 last year. There are two kinds of broken tackles for quarterbacks: standard broken tackles on runs past the line of scrimmage, and what Bill Simmons calls "Houdinis," plays where a quarterback escaped a possible sack. Joe Flacco, oddly enough, makes the top ten after we recorded zero broken tackles in 2012.

Most Broken Tackles, 2013 QB

Player

Team

BT

Houdinis

Past LOS

1-C.Newton

CAR

25

20

5

3-R.Wilson

SEA

15

10

5

7-B.Roethlisberger

PIT

12

12

0

12-A.Luck

IND

10

8

2

7-C.Kaepernick

SF

9

7

2

2-T.Pryor

OAK

9

5

4

7-G.Smith

NYJ

9

5

4

10-R.Griffin

WAS

8

5

3

9-M.Stafford

DET

8

6

2

5-J.Flacco

BAL

7

7

0

Golden Tate led all wide receivers and tight ends with 23 broken tackles, followed by rookie Cordarelle Patterson with 18. A lot of the top wide receivers and tight ends took huge jumps from the year before. Who would have thought of Charles Clay and Martellus Bennett as great tackle-breakers? They had only one and three broken tackles in 2012, respectively. Antonio Brown only had four in 2012 but 15 last year.

Most Broken Tackles, 2012 WR/TE

Player

Team

BT

Runs

Rec

Touches

BT/Touch

81-G.Tate

SEA

23

1

66

67

34.3%

84-C.Patterson

MIN

18

12

45

57

31.6%

84-A.Brown

PIT

15

6

111

117

12.8%

83-M.Bennett

CHI

14

0

65

65

21.5%

13-K.Wright

TEN

14

0

94

94

14.9%

42-C.Clay

MIA

13

7

69

76

17.1%

89-S.Smith

CAR

12

0

64

64

18.8%

11-J.Edelman

NE

11

2

105

107

10.3%

82-M.Jones

CIN

11

8

51

59

18.6%

87-J.Nelson

GB

11

0

85

85

12.9%

13-K.Allen

SD

10

0

71

71

14.1%

81-A.Boldin

SF

9

2

85

87

10.3%

88-J.Finley

GB

9

0

25

25

36.0%

80-J.Graham

NO

9

0

86

86

10.5%

84-J.Gresham

CIN

9

0

46

46

19.6%

15-B.Marshall

CHI

9

0

100

100

9.0%

Finally, here's the overall list for broken tackles on offense. As you might expect, with the top running back, the top wide receiver, and the No. 2 quarterback, the Seattle Seahawks completely blew past the rest of the league in broken tackles last season. There are some interesting divisional combinations: the entire NFC North was very strong breaking tackles last season, while the AFC North is split between teams near the top of the league (Cincinnati, Pittsburgh) and teams near the bottom (Baltimore, Cleveland).

Well, one way to tell would probably be to compare yearly totals. If last year had a measurable increase compared to the prior years and was an outlier from the trend line, then that would probably be a big tell. If the total numbers are generally sporadic though, it'll take a few years to see if there's a general increase in the average since the changes or just a blip (well, you'd want a few years even if this year was an outlier, but you'd have a better shot at making an early case for it).

I think it would make more sense to go position-by-position with the broken tackles to isolate rules changes. The biggest rule change this year was preventing running backs from lowering a shoulder outside the tackle box, so I think we would expect slightly FEWER broken tackles for running backs. On the other hand, it seems to be a penalty now to even try to hit a wide receiver or quarterback, so I would expect tentative tacklers fearing flags to improve the broken tackle numbers at those positions.

Seattle goes last in line in terms of deserving of draft luck. THeir whole resurrgence since 09 was on the back of hitting some absolute home runs in the draft : Both LBs, Both Safeties, their cbs, qb, etc. Essentially grabbed 3 elite players and 4 other extremely solid rising players in a span of 3 years. Simply ridiculous. I'm not sure I can remember another team within the last 20 years, outside of maybe the cowboys of the 90s, that managed such a coup in so short a span.

And those Cowboys had about a dozen extra picks thanks to Mr. Walker. I'm hoping the circle closes this year when the Cowboys give up a boatload of picks to Minny to get Johnny Football - and then he totally goes bust.